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A few decades ago, when the government of Italy was plagued with a high level of corruption, much as our government is today (the failure to defend principles that would best serve the public interest over the longer term can be thought of as a form of corruption), the people of Italy did something very unexpected. Out of sheer frustration with the corrupt political process, they swept communists into power in large numbers. They didn't elect communists because they agreed with their ideology, but because they knew that communists were so fanatically devoted to their principles, that they were much less likely to be corrupted. We want to build a similar reputation for our party. That is, we want the public to recognize that we place our principles, and our vision of the public interest, ahead of winning elections. And, if our devotion to our principles leads to public to see us as revolutionaries of a sort, then, at some point, this is likely to become more of an asset than a liability. For, at some point, the conventional wisdom that is helping to shore up the two party system is going to break down. In the aftermath of its collapse, being a revolutionary could easily become a requirement for winning public office. And, because it is our party's mission to bring about sweeping changes to our government, it is also appropriate that we should begin to see ourselves as revolutionaries.
Revolutions become necessary mainly when human civilizations depart substantially from principles of natural law. Historically, our understanding of natural law has been very limited, and its has been based mainly on what individuals were able to deduce about human nature from personal observations and experience. While personal observations and experience have some reliability, and can go some distance towards informing our understanding of human nature, they are not completely adequate for this purpose. As a result of advances that have been made in the behavioral sciences over recent decades, we now have a much better understanding of human nature, in the context of its evolutionary origins and functions. This more complete understanding of human nature is pointing us in the direction of new principles of natural law, which are the most basic principles for organizing human societies. As representatives of the ASP, it is our mission to insure that our social, economic and political institutions conform more closely to these principles of natural law.
Revolutions also become necessary at certain critical turning points in human history. There are times when the dominant paradigms for dealing with many of a society's most pressing problems simply become outmoded, or they simply stop working. We are now entering such a period. The ideologies that have come to define the bounds of the conventional wisdom (liberalism and conservatism) do not equip us to deal with many of the most serious challenges that we now face, and they are limiting our options. To stand the best chance of maintaining our standard of living, our place on the world stage, and our very way of life, we need a belief system that is much more comprehensive and synthetic, and one which will give us much more freedom of movement than either liberalism or conservatism.
If the founders were alive today, being the shrewd and pragmatic men that they were, they would probably side with us. After all, they were the original synthesists. Although the seeds that would eventually give rise to liberal and conservative factions may have been planted at the time of the founding, there were no liberal or conservative divisions in our government, as we understand them today. Most of all, the founders wanted to prevent these kinds of factions from arising. And, they would have never consented to the kind of adversarial and acrimonious political process that we have today. They would have never consented to dividing our society into two hostile camps, mainly along ideological lines. Rather, if they were confronted with such factions, they would quietly reflect on their causes, and they would attempt to bring about some kind of lasting reconciliation between the warring factions. If necessary, in order to best serve the public interest, they would invoke a "paradigm shift" that would be capable of neutralizing these factions. And, this is the mission that we must now undertake. We will be the champions of this paradigm shift. We will adopt whatever policy stance is necessary to secure the public interest over the longer term, and we will not be bound by either liberal or conservative ideologies.
COPYRIGHT 2010 BY Alex Van Allen